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UH Mānoa in the early 1960s as a coach
and educator, and who had faced discrimination in athletics herself. So she was very
eager to create opportunities for female
athletes at UH,” says Kaneshiro. “All these
things happen in this wonderful sort of
synergy—Title IX passes, Pat Saiki opens
the door for Donnis Thompson to become
athletic director and the Wahine program
is able to be built from the ground up.”
The story doesn’t end there though.
Even after Title IX passed, it took many
more years for the government to work
out what equality in education and what
school-compliance with the law should
look like.
“At first everybody was a bit confused,”
Kaneshiro says. “And some of the controversy arose out of the fact that oftentimes
universities would deal with compliance
by cutting men’s programs to fund these
female programs, and then they would
point the finger at Title IX and say, ‘look
what you’ve done.’ And the way they’d
implement the cuts made them harder
to take because they’d keep all 80 of their
football scholarships and cut the two
for wrestling instead. At the same time
though, one can understand where these
directors were coming from with regards
to maintaining the ‘revenue-generating
sports,’ so it became a complicated issue.”
Throughout 1974–5, a series of bat-
02
01 Wendy Mink talks
about her mother.
02 Pat Saiki was intrumental in shaping
the implementation
of Title IX at UH.
03 Former State Rep.
Faith Evans filed a
lawsuit against UH
after the school tried
to fire Dr. Thompson.
Courtesy
riseofthewahine.com
03
03
tles were fought to clarify enforcement of
Title IX and Patsy Mink once again led the
charge to defend the law against each wave
of attacks. In recognition of this, the law
was officially renamed the “Patsy Takemoto
Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act”
in 2002, after Mink passed away.
“People in the nation don’t really know
that,” says Kaneshiro. “People here in Hawai‘i don’t often know that. So we need to
tell this story. These women had to fight and
stick their necks out, and because of that, a
program like the Wahine exists today.”
02
01 Besides interviewing
Beth, the makers of the
documentary also interview
her husband, Chris McLachlin, who has likewise been
a longtime supporter of the
program.
02 Dave Shoji took over the
Wahine volleyball program’s
head-coach position in 1975.
03 The late Patsy Mink was
the first Asian woman and
first woman of color elected
to Congress in 1965.
Courtesy
riseofthewahine.com
opportunity for them to tell their story,
it’s an opportunity for our generation to
honor them.”
Kaneshiro estimates that about 60–80
percent of the interviews and filming
process for the documentary is completed, but that could change depending on
how much new material the team uncovers while finishing the remainder of production. Then it will be time to begin the
editing process.
Kaneshiro had to learn all the aspects
of video production during his time making promo videos for non-profits and
ministries, who usually had low budgets
to work with. Kaneshiro handles a great
deal of the production for the documentary as well, including doing most of the
filming and editing.
The other members of the team include Tiffany Taylor, a friend of Kaneshiro’s who handles marketing and distribution from Los Angeles; Ryan Kalei Tsuji,
a former assistant coach for the Wahine
Volleyball team who is co-producing
with Kaneshiro as well as helping to setup and conduct interviews with UH officials; and recently, Kaneshiro’s Punahou
classmate, actress and emerging producer
Sarah Wayne Callies (Prison Break, 2005–
9, The Walking Dead, 2010–present) who
is in talks to narrate the documentary.
The Documentary
“You have to believe in the story
you tell,” says Kaneshiro about the research-intensive documentary process.
The process has taken three years already
and he says they’re still discovering more
parts of the story as they go.
“I knew it would be a long journey,”
says Kaneshiro. “But what’s fun about
the documentary is that every single
person that we interviewed—they got
excited about it. Especially the women
who lived through this in the ’70s. It’s an
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